FINALLY! VIRGINIA APPROVES MENHADEN STUDY

 

As regular readers of this blog already know, Atlantic menhaden management has been a hot-button topic in East Coast fisheries management for a very long time.  One of the particularly thorny issues is the so-called “bay cap,” an arbitrary, 51,000 metric ton limitation on the amount of menhaden the big purse seiners of the reduction fleet can take out of the Chesapeake Bay in any one year.

The so-called “Bay Cap” was first put into place in Addendum II to Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden, which was adopted in 2006.  At the time, there were concerns that

“The potential for localized depletion exists in Chesapeake Bay as a result of…concentrated harvest [by the reduction fleet].  Possible outcomes of localized depletion include compromised predator-prey relationships and chronic low recruitment of larval menhaden to the Chesapeake system.  Reviews of existing data suggest that predator-prey relationships could currently be compromised and recruitment of larval menhaden has chronically declined during the last two decades.”

At the same time, Addendum II acknowledged that

“Sufficient scientific data are not available to satisfactorily address the potential for localized depletion in the Bay or to identify specific reasons for predator finfish deficiencies or low larval menhaden recruitment…”

So, in an effort to keep Bay menhaden landings from increasing while the required data was being collected, Addendum II capped Bay reduction landings at the fleet’s average annual landings for the years 2000 through 2004, 109,020 metric tons.

The Bay Cap has since been reduced to 87,216 metric tons (Amendment 2, 2012), and finally to 51,000 metric tons (Amendment 3, 2017).  However, despite those reductions, the basic situation remains unchanged from what it was 20 years ago:  People still talk about localized depletion, and there is still insufficient data to demonstrate whether it exists.

The Bay Cap, at whatever level, remains an arbitrary, precautionary measure, without statistical support.

Finally, that may be about to change.

Since at least 2024, Virginia legislators have introduced bills to fund a study of menhaden in Virginia waters, but those bills have always failed to get out of committee.  It looked like the menhaden research bill introduced in 2024 would follow the same path.  However, this time, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger sent a proposed budget amendment back to the legislature which would appropriate two million dollars, in annual one million dollar installments,

“for Atlantic menhaden research necessary to inform a scientifically defensible and ecologically meaningful Chesapeake Bay harvest cap.”

Governor Spanberger’s budget amendment apparently generated some debate on the floor of the legislature, but in the end, it was approved.

The budget amendment provides that

“This report will be generated by [the Virginia Institute of Marine Science] in collaboration with [the Virginia Marine Resources Commission], and with the cooperation of relevant stakeholders, including recreational anglers, the reduction and bait fishery sectors, and non-governmental organizations.  VIMS will create an annual proposal to draw from the funding, until delivery of the final report that provides an approach to setting a scientifically-defensible Chesapeake Bay harvest cap.

“The development of this report may be informed by research on (i) the seasonal abundance of Atlantic menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay; (ii) the movement rates of Atlantic menhaden between the Atlantic coast and the Chesapeake Bay; (iii) the impacts of predator (e.g. striped bass, osprey, and other species) demand and consumption of Atlantic menhaden on the Atlantic coastal population; (iv) the spatial and temporal patterns of the Atlantic menhaden commercial fishing effort in the Chesapeake Bay; (v) and the possibility of localized depletion of Atlantic menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay.

“This work can utilize recommendations from the report delivered October 1, 2023, titled ‘Atlantic Menhaden Research Planning’ and/or the expected December 2026 deliverables from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCIMFIS)-funded project titled ‘Development of a Research Roadmap for Atlantic Menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay.’

“The Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement and the Virginia Economic Authority, in consultation with the Menhaden Management Advisory Committee of the VMRC, will contribute analysis and recommendations to the Menhaden report on potential workforce impacts.

“Beginning with fiscal year 2028 and in subsequent fiscal years thereafter, VMRC shall provide new scientific data and research products generated under this item by VIMS, to inform the annual discussion and deliberations of Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) on any proposed changes to the coast-wide or Chesapeake Bay total allowable catch levels.

“The committee report shall include (i) projected workforce impacts from coast-wide and Chesapeake Bay changes in total allowable catch, and (ii) recommendations for addressing impacts to workers by changes in total allowable catch.

“VIMS shall present report progress, current findings and any recommendations, along with their annual proposal to draw from the menhaden funding for the following year to the Chairmen of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation, and Natural Resources, the House Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources, the Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources, the Ecological Reference Points Workgroup of ASMFC, and the Menhaden Management Advisory Committee of VMRC, yearly by October 1.”

That’s exactly the sort of comprehensive menhaden study that we’ve been needing for the last couple of decades, that can finally answer the question about menhaden abundance in the Chesapeake Bay, localized depletion, and the dependence of Bay predators on the menhaden resource.

For years, we’ve been seeing advocates on one side of the debate making breathless comments such as

“Omega has decimated the stock!

“They should be banned from fishing in the Bay Area and the whole east coast for that matter!!

“They harvest the entire stock that they find with their drones and airplanes!!

“There is no stock when they are done!!!”

and

“I can’t really convey in words how much I hate those boats.  And if anybody has a problem with my opinion, I can give you a list of reasons why they should be banned.”

On the other side of the table, we find the menhaden industry attempting to strike a very rational posture, claiming that their anti-regulatory stance is well rooted in science.  Thus, after a recent scientific paper concluded that a recent spate of osprey nest failures might be primarily attributed to reduced availability of menhaden, particularly in high-salinity portions of the Chesapeake Bay, Monty Diehl, the CEO of Ocean Harvesters, which operates the only menhaden reduction fleet on the East Coast, responded by saying,

“This study documents osprey concerns, but it does not prove that our fishery caused it.  Many of the study areas discussed are not places where our vessels fish, and the paper appears to accuse commercial harvest without showing a clear connection between actual fishing activity and the nesting problems it describes.”

And that’s all true as far as it goes. 

But it’s also true that Ocean Harvesters removes tens of thousands of metric tons of menhaden from the Chesapeake Bay each year, and Ocean Harvesters offers no alternative explanation as to why menhaden availability might be down.

They just protest, “You can’t prove it was us.”

Similarly, the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition is quick to point out that the menhaden stock is not overfished, but it chronically fails to mention that the 2025 stock assessment update found menhaden fecundity (the number of eggs produced by the population, which the assessment uses as a proxy for abundance) was only 5% above the threshold that defines an overfished stock, so while the stock was “not overfished” at the end of 2024, the last year considered in the assessment update, it was creeping ever closer to that designation, and we don’t really know whether it might have crossed that threshold sometime between December 31, 2024 and today.

So it’s probably fair to say that, while both sides of the debate are, technically, telling what they believe to be the truth, they’re also presenting their truths in ways that might be considered deceiving.

The Virginia menhaden study, when it concludes, is unlikely to give either side anywhere to hide.

Ambiguity favors the industry, for so long as there is room to argue that there is no proof that localized depletion exists, or that the fishery is harming the Chesapeake ecosystem, they can probably continue to argue successfully against harvest reductions.

If the study finds that localized depletion is indeed occurring, and that predator populations are being adversely affected by a decline in menhaden abundance, it’s going to be hard for the industry to do anything but accept the conclusions, although it might very well decide to commission its own study that it hopes will reach different conclusions. 

Based on past performance, should the Virginia study’s results lead the ASMFC to attempt to reduce or, although highly unlikely, even eliminate the reduction fishery within the Chesapeake Bay, the industry would likely shift its emphasis from science onto economics, pointing to the hardship a further reduction would cause its employees, and argue that any reduction be phased in over the longest possible period.

Although, to be fair, Ocean Harvester’s Deihl did say that

“We look forward to continuing to work with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in collaboration with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission to develop a scientific study of the Bay’s Atlantic menhaden population.”

Whether Ocean Harvesters will continue to look forward to working with the VMRC should the study’s findings be contrary to their interests is something yet to be determined.

Some of the groups opposing the current level of menhaden harvest also had good things to say about the study.  Will Poston, speaking for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, observed that

“Unfortunately, many questions remain about the health of the Bay’s menhaden population and the iconic species such as menhaden that depend upon it.  This is precisely why independent science on menhaden in the Bay is so important.”

And, from what I’ve seen of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, it has enough institutional integrity that, if the study ultimately determines that there is no localized depletion taking place, that the 51,000 metric ton cap is more than adequate to protect the menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay, or even that the cap could be safely raised or possibly eliminated, some of its folks might grumble a bit, but they will accept the science and set about adjusting its programs accordingly.

However, I doubt that will be true of the hordes of individuals that have been worked up over the years by the various “campaigns” and smaller-scale efforts to cripple or eliminate the reduction fishery, as well as the campaign spokesmen themselves. 

Should the study come out with conclusions that they don’t want to hear, based on the way they’ve behaved in the past, I would expect those who worship at the Altar of the Divine Menhaden to react the way any hard-core believer responds to heresy:  They’ll likely accuse those who conducted the study of being paid off by, or at least biased toward, the menhaden industry.  They will argue that the science is wrong, and that the reduction industry is, regardless of what the science says, killing too many fish and causing dire harm to everything from blue crabs to humpback whales.

That’s because their anti-reduction fleet sentiment is powered by emotion, not data, and emotion is inherently irrational, and so more-or-less immune to rational appeals.

But for now, we can only wait and see, secure in the knowledge that, in just a few years, we will finally have a scientific understanding of the menhaden within the Chesapeake Bay.

That might not make some people happy, but making people happy isn’t truth’s job.

Its job is just to be true.

RATIONAL VOICES BEGIN TO INFILTRATE SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER DEBATE

 

Over-the-top hyperbole and intemperate rhetoric has characterized the debate over recreational red snapper fishing in the South Atlantic, even before the National Marine Fisheries Service bowed to political pressure and issued exempted fishing permits that failed to comply with the agency’s own regulations, not to mention federal law.

The extreme rhetoric originated in the press releases of organizations representing the recreational fishing industry, including the American Sportfishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association, and the Center for Sportfishing Policy.  For example, Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, raged that

“The South Atlantic has long been trapped in a broken bureaucratic federal system that limits opportunity to a plentiful public resource,”

completely ignoring the fact that anglers have been catching and killing about half a million South Atlantic red snapper every year—which seems like pretty good “access”—but that they’re killing about 475,000 of them during the closed red snapper season, when the fish must be released any many fall victim to barotrauma caused by being hauled up from depths where the pressure of the surrounding water is much higher than it is at the surface.

The fishing tackle industry tries to hide from that truth by attacking the federal data collection system, the Marine Recreational Information Program, with one industry group, the Coastal Conservation Association, alleging that the number of discards are overstated and saying that

“When NOAA Fisheries argues that recreational discards of red snapper are driving an overfishing problem, it is important to emphasize that the discard data comes from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) survey and is the only non-validated data in the catch survey.  It is well known that that these self-reported numbers are subject to digit bias, and perhaps extreme digit bias.  When many fish are being caught and released on a trip, people have a tendency to stop counting by individual fish and start counting by number blocks (fives and tens) and they generally round upwards.  Additionally, recall bias can exaggerate the digit bias.  Whether this bias runs high or low is uncertain, although individuals familiar with these survey methods believe that this process and anglers’ natural behavior (exaggeration) skews it in the high direction.”

It was a heroic effort, and might even have been convincing had the CCA not stated, earlier in the same comment letter, that

“Anecdotal evidence from anglers indicates that red snapper are the only species which can be reliably encountered virtually everywhere in the region, and it is almost impossible to get a fish other than a red snapper to take a bait,”

presumably because the snapper are so numerous that they beat other fish to anglers’ offerings. That presumption seems to be confirmed by at least one piece of anecdotal evidence, a fisherman commenting on a charter boat’s Facebook page,

“giving REC guys two days [season] for a fish that there’s zero chance of your [sic] not catching them, shit you probably going to burn a ton of gas money just to go throw away Red snapper all day.”

For if red snapper are so abundant that it is “almost impossible to get a fish other than a red snapper to take a bait,” even during the closed season, if South Atlantic anglers “throw away Red snapper all day,” and if the release mortality rate for South Atlantic red snapper—even when a descending device is used—is really 29%, and 46.8% without a descender, as a recent study conducted in the heart of north Florida’s red snapper waters reported, then the release numbers, and the calculated number of dead discards, reported by NMFS don’t seem unreasonable at all.

They might even be a little low.

But then, reason has never been a big part of the recreational fishing industry’s arguments.  That same lack of reason was reflected in a letter written by Roger Young, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, urging the issuance of the exempted fishing permits.

I won’t quote too much of the letter here, because it has appeared in previous posts, but I have to note the use of language like

“rein in bureaucracy,”

his saying that

“career NOAA staff will inevitably create a bureaucratic blockade at the behest of status-quo defending adversarial interests,”

and his reference to a supposed

“weaponization of NOAA under President Obama.”

And yes, all of that breathless bold type and underlining was in the original letter.

Like the language coming out of the various recreational fishing industry groups, it was the sort of thing that no one with a sense of propriety, or even a sense of effective writing, would ever stoop to.

And that was before a federal district court judge temporarily enjoined the exempted fishing permits after he determined that they failed to meet some basic legal standard.

At that point, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the federal judge “disrespectful” because he did his job, interpreting and applying federal fisheries law.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission whined that

“a rogue federal judge sided with activists,”

and made a social media post picturing a red snapper along with the words,

“Come and take it.”

The American Sportfishing Association issued a press release announcing that

“ASA and CCA Respond to Court Decision Blocking South Atlantic Red Snapper Pilot Programs,”

(because the CCA seems to sit on the American Sportfishing Association’s knee like a ventriloquist’s dummy, giving voice to whatever message the ASA wants it to say), which included statements like

“Economic consequences of this decision will be substantial throughout the South Atlantic region.  ASA and CCA are currently working with partners and stakeholders to gather information that demonstrates the full scope of these impacts,”

even though, with the exempted fishing permits enjoined, the recreational fishing industry in the South Atlantic would end up with the very same thing that they had for the previous decade or so—either no recreational red snapper season, or one that only lasts for a couple of days.  So to say that the judge’s injunction did anything worse than maintain the status quo is somewhat disingenuous.

But among all the hyperbole, exaggerations, and just plain dishonesty swirling around the South Atlantic red snapper issue, we’re beginning to see the emergence of a few responsible spokesmen for the recreational fishing industry and the broader recreational community.  It’s probably important to note that those voices don’t come from industry giants like the ASA or the Center for Sportfishing Policy, where big war chests and political connections lead to a sort of institutional arrogance, that seems to make them believe that they can bulldoze the management system into adopting their preferred measures.

Instead, the rationality leaking into the debate is coming from far smaller entities, such as the Ponce Fish Network, a group of northeast Florida charter boat captains who posted an extensive essay on South Atlantic red snapper on its Facebook page.  There, the group started out saying that

“This is an in-depth analysis of why the Atlantic red snapper EFP permits stalled, where the legal and management issues appear to sit, and why believing the 2026 season was secure may have been ill advised.  The goal is to look honestly at the structure underneath the promise.  The missing pieces that made it vulnerable, and what this moment should teach us before the next fight begins.

“It is important to note that the court didn’t reject better recreational data, state involvement, or the need to fix red snapper management.  In fact, the order recognized that better data collection serves an important public interest.  What the court rejected was the way this particular EFP was approved, without harvest estimates required by NMFS’ own regulations, without enough explanation of how expanded seasons would avoid overfishing, and without a structure strong enough to survive the legal system it was operating inside.”

That kind of language is refreshing to hear.  No screaming about rogue judges, bureaucratic blockades, broken bureaucratic federal systems, or the weaponization of NOAA.  Just a calm acceptance of the fact that, in rushing through exempted fishing permits without due concern for applicable law, the various recreational fishing organizations, state officials, and the high-level administration personnel who compelled NMFS to take illegal action effectively dropped the ball, and brought legal defeat upon themselves.

Of course, the folks actually responsible for the debacle aren’t going to admit that they were the ones at fault.  The American Sportfishing Association has already issued a press release announcing that

“Florida’s Last-Minute Atlantic Red Snapper Closure Caused Immediate Harm to Fishing Businesses and Coastal Communities,”

in which Martha Guyas, Southeast Fisheries Policy Director for the organization, said

“The Atlantic red snapper stock is healthy and abundant, yet anglers and businesses were denied meaningful access with almost no warning.  ASA calls on federal and state agencies, as well as state and federal lawmakers, to do everything possible to salvage a meaningful 2026 season and prevent this kind of economic harm from happening again.”

But just what kind of “economic harm” are we talking about?

Remember that, even with the temporary injunction in place, nothing would prevent recreational fishermen in the South Atlantic from enjoying about the same sort of red snapper season that they’ve had for the past decade or so—maybe a little shorter than some years, definitely a little longer than others, but essentially the status quo.  So to say that maintaining the status quo caused some sort of economic harm seems like a bit of a stretch.

However, because of the sloppy work done by all concerned, including the ASA, in putting the flawed exempted fishing permits in place—and given the quality of the attorneys and staff maintained by the big recreational organizations, it is difficult to believe that they didn’t know that the EFPs were legally flawed—they did create false hopes and unreasonable expectations for anglers and those operating fishing-related businesses.  So when a charter boat business complains that

“The State of Florida and NMFS told us in writing that we would have 39 days to fish for Red Snapper.  I booked all days as my clients were anticipating the opportunity.  Literally 4 hours before the opening day, the federal government said no.  My livelihood depends on charter fishing,”

the real grievance isn’t with the judge, or with the commercial fishermen who brought the lawsuit trying to protect their interest in a healthy red snapper population, but in a federal agency that engaged in sloppy and legally defective rulemaking, in a Florida government more concerned with “bureaucratic blockades,” “status-quo defending adversarial interests,” and “weaponization of NOAA” than in submitting a permit application that complied with all of NMFS’ applicable requirements, and in recreational industry advocacy groups that pressured agency staffs to get things done in a hasty fashion.

Similarly, when another charter boat operator complained that

“It completely destroyed my year.  The buildup for red snapper season stemming from Nov. 2025 had my calendar filling up very quickly.  When the closure happened, people began cancelling immediately and began changing plans to travel to the Gulf,”

it also evidences the harm done by the people and organizations who created false expectations. 

After all, the exempted fishing permits weren’t issued by NMFS until around the first of May, so anyone who began booking trips before then—apparently, as early as November 2025, was doing so based on promises made by someone.  And if those promises were based on the issuance of  legally insufficient exempted fishing permits, as seems to be the case, the folks who made them owe a lot of people apologies, particularly those charter boats who booked red snapper trips based on the promise, when they could have booked trips to pursue other species, and ended up tied to the dock when the red snapper trips cancelled.

That would represent real economic harm, but it wasn’t caused by the judge’s decision.  It was caused by the folks who promised something that they should have known that they probably couldn’t deliver.

Thus, we go back to the Ponce Fish Network:

“Fishermen were asked to believe that state managed EFPs would bring access, access would produce better data, better data would expose the discard problem, and exposing that problem would finally force the system to admit what people on the water have been saying for years.  In theory, that sounds like a breakthrough, but in reality, that is a tremendous amount of legal and political weight to place on an experimental permit still operating inside the same federal system everyone already claims is broken.

“The question that keeps coming back is simple: why wasn’t the Atlantic pilot built with the same kind of recognizable accounting structure that made Gulf state management harder to attack?  The Gulf did not arrive at expanded red snapper access by simply declaring the federal system wrong and opening the gates.  Its model came with clearer management structure, state by state accountability, monitoring, allocations, reporting, and an accounting system that the federal structure could recognize.  It had numbers, limits, accountability, and a defined way to measure harvest.”

Of course, the unspoken truth was that limits and accountability were exactly what the proponents of the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs were trying to avoid.  The letter accompanying the Georgia EFP application, for example, explicitly stated that

“At this time, Georgia is apprehensive about providing a number for Red Snapper harvest that will be included in our EFP…Our greatest concern is the number will be used punitively to shorten the requested season, define a regional quota, and/or establish state allocations.”

The South Atlantic states, along with the angling industry groups, were hoping to use the EFPs to get around the annual catch limits and other conservation measures of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  Numbers, limits, and accountability were definitely not a part of their agenda.

So, the Ponce Fish Network goes on:

“The Atlantic EFP felt different from the start.  It was not just state management, it was state management plus access, access plus discard reduction, discard reduction plus better data, better data plus political celebration, and political celebration plus legal risk.  Somewhere inside that pile, the actual question got buried: could this survive the very system it was trying to challenge?

“This is the part that borders on absurd, because this was not some dockside rumor that got ahead of itself.  This was built with the involvement of the very agencies responsible for fisheries management, the people who should have known what the legal blueprint required.  Yet somehow, with every agency in the room, the plan somehow still walked into court missing the pieces that a judge was always going to ask for first: harvest estimates, accountability, and a clear explanation of how expanded access would stay inside the law…

“…The court’s problem was painfully simple:  NMFS’ own EFP regulations required the applications to include the amount of harvest expected or necessary under the permit, and the states did not provide that number.  They did not just fail to sell the idea politically, they left blank the exact accounting question a court was always going to ask.

“You cannot manage fish without numbers.  You cannot walk into a legal fight over annual catch limits without numbers, and you cannot tell a court harvest will stay under control when the applications themselves refuse to estimate how much harvest the permits may produce…

“To be clear, that does not magically make the federal data right…But no numbers is not a legal strategy.  If the Atlantic wants to defeat flawed federal math, it has to bring better math to the table, not just a political promise and a behavioral theory.”

And that, of course, was the problem.  The Gospel of the recreational fishing industry—the core of the catechism that it preaches online and in the press—is that federal recreational fishing data, derived from the Marine Recreational Information Program, is “fatally flawed,” and should be replaced by state data programs.  And there is no question that MRIP has, in the past, overestimated recreational fishing effort, and so also overestimated both recreational harvest and live releases (although, the way most stock assessment models work, that also means that spawning stock biomass is also overestimated, making the whole thing more-or-less a wash), although that ought to be corrected by Labor Day.

The industry advocates aren’t producing any state landings data that can be peer reviewed and compared with the MRIP data; instead, they basically just say, “Trust me,” and insist that the state data is free of meaningful flaws, without any proof that is the case.

At that point, the Ponce Fish Network started turning over stones that the industry, and its allies in government, would rather leave untouched.

“The plaintiffs’ public case was about legality, accountability, and stock protectgion.  But the quieter fear may have been that the EFP would fully expose the true scale of recreational red snapper interaction, and once that number was on paper, NMFS could use it to justify even tighter restrictions.  That fear was not imaginary either.  It was evidenced in the states’ own refusal to submit expected harvest numbers, with some openly concerned those numbers could be used to shorten the season, define quotas, or create allocations.  That cuts both ways.  It could have helped prove that the current data system is broken, but it also could have handed managers the ammunition to shut the door harder.

“This is where the public argument becomes especially painful.  It is easy to turn this into a sector fight and say that the commercial sector killed the season, but that is not what the court order says.  The harder truth is that the law was not followed closely enough for the permits to survive.  The blame should not fall solely on the people who noticed the legal weakness and challenged it.  It should also fall on the people and agencies who had the responsibility to build the plan correctly in the first place.

“That may be the most heart wrenching part of all.  Instead of accountability landing where it belongs on the structure that failed, the anger has been redirected towards the people who pointed out the crack in the foundation.  Fishermen are now fighting each other over the collapse of a plan they did not design, while the agencies and decision makers who should have known what the law required are allowed to fade into the background…

“Instead of fixing the numbers first and then opening access on a stronger foundation, the plan appeared to open access first and use the season to prove why the numbers needed to be fixed.  That may be politically appealing, but legally it is vulnerable.  Magnuson Stevens, ACL requirements, environmental review, allocation fights, discard mortality estimates, rebuilding timelines, and the NGO legal playbook do not disappear just because political momentum finally shows up.

“This does not mean the movement was worthless.  It means the movement may have been mispackaged.  The Atlantic does not need a shiny headline as much as it needed a foundation.  It needed a real quota fight, a real discard fight, a real data fight, and then a state management plan built on numbers strong enough to survive court instead of politics strong enough to survive a press conference…

“This is why ‘we were bamboozled’ resonates, even if the more precise word may be ‘we were oversold.’  The fishing community was not wrong to hope, the industry was not wrong to prepare, and Captains were not wrong to tell customers that access appeared to be coming back.  But the plan was sold with the emotional weight of a confirmed rescue while the legal structure underneath it still looked like a gambling at a poker table.”

The Ponce Fish Network went on for a ways more, speculating on what could have been done better and what might be done in the future.  But the foregoing says all that really needs to be said.

The South Atlantic red snapper EFPs were, at their heart, always something close to a con, with the recreational fishing industry, aided and abetted by state regulators and high-level administration officials, making assertions that weren’t supported by objective data, and ultimately producing exempted fishing permits that failed to meet minimum legal standards.

Because they were quick to trumpet their alleged success, they—and I will use the word—bamboozled the charter boats, tackle shops, and angling public, convincing them that the illegally-issued EFPs would usher in longer recreational red snapper seasons and increased red snapper landings, when they knew—or at least should have known—that those EFPs were unlikely to survive judicial review.

The Ponce Fish Network told the entire story, probably better than I ever told it myself, and did so in sober prose that laid out the facts, and the Network’s opinion, without hyperbole, name calling, or straying from the truth.  Hopefully, as the South Atlantic red snapper debate continues, we will see more rational spokesmen for the recreational community emerge, and use similarly sober language to overcome the hyperbole, exaggeration, and untruths that have been repeatedly voiced by both the recreational fishing industry and, sadly, by government officials convinced or compelled to echo the industry’s words.

Because there is a funny thing about truth.  Even spoken softly, it can drown out the most loudly spoken lies.

 

 

ATLANTIC MENHADEN: DEAD IS DEAD, AND ALLOCATION IS NOT CONSERVATION

 

One of the biggest disappointments at the Annual Meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission last October was the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board’s failure to adopt meaningful reductions in menhaden landings.

The 2025 stock assessment update had found an error in the estimate of natural mortality, and determined that the natural mortality rate was lower than previously believed.  As a result, the estimate of stock fecundity (the overall number of eggs produced, which is used in lieu of a spawning stock biomass estimate) dropped substantially, while the estimated fishing mortality rate increased.  Thus, while the stock status remains

“not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.”

the assessment update noted a marked change in the perceived condition of the stock.  Previous to the update, it was believed that fecundity was above the fecundity target, and that the fishing mortality rate was below the fishing mortality target, which suggested that the stock was in something close to perfect health.  But the stock assessment update informed managers that, in fact,

“The fishing mortality rate for the terminal year of 2023 is below the [ecological reference point] threshold and above the ERP target…and the fecundity for the terminal year of 2023 is above the ERP threshold and but [sic] below the ERP target.” 

Thus, while the stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, it is also at suboptimal abundance and being fished at a somewhat excessive rate.  Somewhat ominously, fecundity was low enough—just 105% of the fecundity threshold—at the end of 2023 that it is entirely possible, depending on the number of new fish recruited into the stock, that a new stock assessment might find that Atlantic menhaden are overfished today.

Last October, the Management Board had a chance to remedy that situation, as they sat down to debate the total allowable catch for the years 2026-2028.  The existing TAC, for the years 2023-2025, was 233,550 metric tons; in order to have a bare 50% probability of keeping the fishing mortality rate at or below the target level, the total allowable catch would have to be reduced to no more than 108,500 metric tons, a reduction of nearly 54%.

The menhaden fishing industry, and particularly the “reduction fishery,” which purse seines menhaden by the ton and “reduces” the fish to fish oil and fish meal, was naturally opposed to such a large reduction, particularly if it was made in a single year.  Some New England states were also opposed to reductions, not because they had lucrative menhaden fisheries, but because their lobstermen needed the menhaden for trap bait, since the traditional bait, Atlantic herring, became overfished and are far less available than they once were.

So instead of taking any sort of meaningful action, the Management Board engaged in a sort of sleight of hand that made it appear that they were doing something, when in fact they did nothing at all to lower menhaden landings (although they did keep landings from increasing):  They lowered the total allowable catch for 2026 by 20%, to 186,840 metric tons.  However, the menhaden fishery wasn’t catching its entire quota, but instead were falling short by…about 20%, so the reduction in TAC, while looking substantive on paper, did nothing to cut menhaden landings in the real world. As Robert LaFrance, proxy for Connecticut’s Governor’s Appointee, commented,

“I think we have to recognize that when we set the TAC at 233,000 metric tons…[w]e did not know what we know now about the natural mortality of the species.  The fact that we’re looking at a 20% reduction from that number seems to me to be, it’s almost like a false compromise…”

Despite the near-meaningless impact of the motion, it passed on a vote of 16 to 2.

The only good thing was that, instead of setting the total allowable catch for 2026 through 2028, as originally intended, the Management Board only set the TAC for a single year, 2026, and will revisit future years when they meet again.

That has created a situation ripe for clashes between the menhaden industry and those trying to rein in menhaden harvest.

As I’ve noted before, menhaden are a “political fish” where emotional arguments have taken over the management debate, and largely drowned out the rational voice of science.  Menhaden have often been in the news this year, as advocates for reduced landings and advocates for the menhaden industry throw accusations back and forth.   Lyrics from that old Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth, are probably applicable:”

“What a field day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and a-carrying signs

Mostly say, ‘Hooray for our side.’”

As the August and October Management Board meetings draw closer, the volume of the rhetoric has been going up.

That’s not necessarily bad, as anecdotal reports indicate a lack of menhaden along much of the East Coast, something that is somewhat predictable when the fishing mortality rate is well above target and biomass—or in menhaden’s case, fecundity—is dangerously close to dropping below the threshold.

But what we’re seeing, particularly from the folks who purport to support menhaden conservation, are videos and press releases intended to evoke emotion rather than rational thought and, from some with an economic axe to grind, self-serving proposals with public relations appeal, which are not, at their heart, really conservation-oriented proposals at all.

For when we talk about conservation, we need to keep two basic precepts in mind:

1)      If you want to have more fish, you need to kill fewer of them, and

2)     It doesn’t matter to the fish who kills it; either way, it’s still dead.

Many of the people involved in the menhaden debate seem to be missing those points, and thus make it more difficult to adopt management measures that everyone—most particularly the menhaden—can live with.

I was reminded of that the other day when I happened across a video released by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, titled “A Tiny Atlantic Fish—A Major Controversy.”  The interesting thing about the video is that it hardly mentioned conservation at all—something that seems somewhat startling in a video released by an outfit calling itself the “Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.”

Instead, after a few cameo appearances from anglers and fishing guides who merely provided their views on how important menhaden were to coastal ecosystems and to fishing success, the only mention of conservation occurred when Jaclyn Lunaas, a Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership Employee responsible for the organization’s forage fish program, noted that the ASMFC was responsible for menhaden management, and that

“In order to have ecological and economic resilience across the entire East Coast, we need fair allocation of this public resource between states…Right now, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is going to be debating two decisions:  First, whether or not to reduce the total amount of menhaden that can be caught coastwide, and second, how to reallocate how that catch is divided between Atlantic states.”

There was almost no further messaging on the need to reduce the total allowable catch, and no mention of the need to get fishing mortality down to the target level.  Instead, the majority of the video was all about allocation, with Ms. Lunaas continuing,

“We just want a fair share of a public resource.  This resource keeps ecosystems healthy, boats running, businesses open, and communities out on the water.  We need a reallocation of menhaden quota in order to stabilize bait supply, particularly in northern states.  This would lower costs for lobstermen and charter captains, and it would keep economic value in coastal communities, while a modest reduction in overall catch would ensure that the resource remains healthy for everyone coastwide and long-term.”

That’s a somewhat strange position for any group that holds itself out as a conservation organization to take.  After all, if the concern is reducing menhaden landings—as it should be—it makes no difference whether those landings take place in Virginia, which is currently allocated 75% of the landings, or in Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida, which are each allocated roughly 0.25%. 

Wherever a menhaden is landed, it is killed, and will make no further contribution to the growth or fecundity of the stock.

And a broad ireallocation doesn’t even make much sense from a practical standpoint.  If we look at the ASMFC’s review of the 2024 menhaden fishery—the last such annual review available—we find that one state, Massachusetts, exceeded its base menhaden quota by about 20% (although it made up the overage by receiving quota transfers from other states), and Maine came close to harvesting its quota, but the other states’ landings fell far short.  At best, a couple states harvested less than half of their quotas, New York landed about 25%, but the other states landed far less—anywhere from about 3% in Connecticut to 19% in North Carolina.

So, in the case of most states, it’s hard to understand how reallocation is going to do more to keep “ecosystems healthy, boats running, shops open, and communities out on the water,” when those states aren’t coming close to landing the allocations that they already have.

Of course, if the annual catch limit was cut significantly, more states would come close to landing their full quotas, but even a 50% reduction would only have a material impact on three states—Maine, Massachusetts, and Virginia—with the other states’ landings, based on landings in 2024, still falling at or below their quotas.  And TRCP has already demonstrated that it couldn’t care less whether Virginia takes a cut.

So what would seem to make sense, from a strategic and a conservation standpoint, would be to reallocate some of Virginia’s menhaden to the northern New England states that need lobster bait, in exchange for their support of an annual catch limit—which might have to be phased in over two or three years—that would have a reasonable chance of reducing fishing mortality to the target level.

But a general reallocation to other states, which are already falling far short of filling their quotas, makes no sense at all.

Still, when it comes to the Theordore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership video, parhaps the most startling thing is that it calls for nothing more than a “modest reduction” in menhaden landings.  Since it’s hard to imagine anyone calling a near-50% reduction “modest,” it would seem that the TRCP isn’t all that concerned with real conservation—that is, getting landings down to the point where they’d have a 50% probability of keeping fishing mortality at or below target—and far more concerned with a largely unnecessary allocation.

Again, that seems to be a somewhat surprising stance for a supposed conservation organization to take.

But then, when we look a little deeper into the video, things become a little more clear; the reallocation effort is less an attempt to conserve menhaden, as it is a way to cripple the menhaden reduction fishery, long a boogeyman for many of the menhaden advocates, which is based in Virginia and would take a significant economic hit if Virginia’s state quota was cut. 

The buzzwords are all there.

The narrator talks about the Virginia quota being

“caught by a single industrial company,”

while the video streams pictures of reduction boats setting their seines, and multiple vessels returning to port, as if the menhaden would be somehow less dead if they were caught by anyone else.

The narrator goes on to say,

“So even though it’s a coastwide fishery, most of the pressure is happening in one place, and that’s largely coming from a single industrial organization.  Whether you’re a recreational angler, a fishing guide, charter captain, or tackle shop owner, it’s one industrial company that’s taking a significant portion of the most important fish that’s the key and the backbone to our fishery and all the small businesses that rely on it.”

The narrator can’t seem to say “industrial” too many times; he knows that it evokes a knee-jerk reaction.

But the question is why a purported conservation organization would take such a position, given that reallocation would have no impact on menhaden populations.

Part of the reason might be that reallocation would make it easier to convince Maine and Massachusetts to vote for a landings reduction, but the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership had already stated that it supported a “modest” reduction, so scraping up votes probably wasn’t a major motivation.

A more likely answer can probably be found in another TRCP press release, which announced that

“$1.5 Billion in Annual Economic Output Generated from Recreational Angling That Involves Atlantic Menhaden as Bait,”

and begins

“As the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission prepares to set a new menhaden catch limit and considers whether to initiate a reallocation process among the states, a new study shows that recreational anglers rely on this keystone species as one of the most important baitfish.”

Once again, it’s hard to understand why the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership would be making conservation policy decisions based on economic considerations in the recreational fishery, until one realizes that the “new study” mentioned in the press release was not commissioned by the TRCP, but by the American Sportfishing Association, the big fishing tackle trade organization, which is very concerned with maintaining the recreational fishing industry’s income stream, and which might logically be concerned about landings reductions making menhaden less available, and about local shortages of menhaden leading to anglers fishing less and the tackle industry selling less stuff.

And the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership tends to march hand-in-hand with the American Sportfishing Association on fisheries issues, with the TRCP consistently echoing the ASA’s economic concerns (e.g., the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s October 2025 opposition to a reduction in striped bass landings, in part because of potential “unwarranted economic disruption,” in a letter that seems to pirate its themes from the comments submitted by the ASA).

The economic study took the broadest possible measure of economic impact, economic output, which an economist quoted in the press release described as

“the full spectrum of spending that occurs for fishing trips where menhaden are used as bait, from direct purchases of equipment, food, fuel, and the many other items needed for a day of fishing, to the downstream effects that spending has on retailers, manufacturers, and countless other businesses,”

while the study itself advised that

“This report does not suggest that these fishing trips and the associated spending would not occur without the availability of menhaden; some of the anglers who currently fish in saltwater using menhaden might instead use different saltwater baits, target different saltwater fish or decide to go freshwater fishing.”

So, while I wouldn’t be shocked to hear some of the less responsible members of the advocacy community start putting out press releases screaming something like, “Coastal communities to lose $1.5 billion from menhaden crash!” which would be pretty much in line with the sort of thing that they’ve been putting out already, the truth is, as usually the case, less extreme.

Menhaden are an important forage fish.  Menhaden are important to anglers, in part because they make fishing easy—menhaden schools typically concentrate predators, and tossing a live menhaden into the schools is often an easy way to entice a bite—and in part because they are a popular bait and chum.  And tackle shops sell quite a bit of menhaden and menhaden-derived products. 

But—and pay close attention to this one—even with landings cut in half and no reallocations of any kind—the bait fishery in all but a couple of New England states would be largely unaffected, and still able to supply anglers’ needs, because those states are not coming close to catching its quota today.

And to those who might want to argue that some states aren’t catching their menhaden quota because the fish aren’t present in their waters, I will make the obvious reply that reallocating fish that aren’t there isn’t going to increase local landings. 

However, making more than “modest” cuts to coastwide landings very likely will restore menhaden abundance.

I hate to use an already overused cliché, but reallocating menhaden among the states is much like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Neither action addresses the core problem.

If you wanted the Titanic to keep floating, you would have needed to reduce the amount of water inside the hull, and put it back in the ocean.

And if we want more menhaden, whether to supply forage to predators, supply more bait for anglers and lobstermen, or provide easier fishing for guides, charter captains and recreational fishermen alike, we need to reduce the amount of menhaden ending up dead on boats of various sizes, and keep more in the ocean.

Changing who kills the menhaden won’t make a difference, because they’ll still be dead.

Changing where the menhaden are killed won’t make a difference, because they’ll still be killed.

The only way to increase menhaden numbers, which is what legitimate conservation organizations surely want to do, is to reduce landings, and kill fewer fish. 

The sooner all of the various advocacy groups accept that basic truth, and start working together to get fishing mortality back to its target level, the sooner something meaningful might get done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACCIDENTAL REEFS

 

There isn’t much hard bottom in the mid-Atlantic Bight.  According to one study of the habitat requirements of black sea bass,

“The mid-Atlantic Bight stretches from North Carolina to Massachusetts…The nearshore continental shelf is composed primarily of unconsolidated sediments consisting of sand, silt, shells, and small gravels.  Bedforms consist mainly of sand waves, small hills, and gullies created by ancient riverbeds, with rare outcroppings of rock, consolidated sand, and clay.”

That doesn’t leave much to attract and hold structure-oriented fish such as black sea bass, nor to help fishermen find concentrations of such species.  As a result, fishermen tend to focus on various forms of man-made structure.

For decades, many of the states have conducted artificial reef programs, where they sink various items in hopes of creating structure that will hold sessile life forms such as mussels and sea anemones, which in turn create habitat used by crabs, other crustaceans, and bait fish, which then attract and hold recreationally important food and sport fish.

Years ago, many such reefs were created by filling bundles of tires with cement and dropping them in designated areas, or dumping chunks of broken up concrete or unwanted steel from demolished buildings, but that didn’t work all that well, with the former often breaking up and washing ashore during storms and the latter getting covered over with shifting sand and losing its utility.

But after a while, the states began to understand what they needed to do, and started sinking unwanted steel vessels of various sorts (after first scrubbing out any oil, grease, or other potential pollutants), surplus armored military vehicles, train cars, pieces of demolished bridges, and even “reef balls” and other items purpose-built to create artificial reefs.

There is no question that fishermen love artificial reefs, as they attract and concentrate fish and make them easier to find and catch.  Whether the artificial reefs also benefit the fish by creating additional habitat, particularly in regions where hard-bottom habitat is scarce, is a very different question, and one that remains open for debate.  As one scientific paper noted,

“Productivity in real terms in relation to artificial reef deployment relies on the assumption that artificial reefs provide additional critical habitat which increases the environmental carrying capacity and thereby the abundance and biomass of reef biota.  The reef potentially provides substrata for benthic fauna and, thereby, additional food and increased feeding efficiency; shelter from predation or tidal currents; a recruitment habitat for individuals that would otherwise be lost from the population; a reduction of harvesting pressure on natural reefs.  It can also serve to be purely an aggregating device, whereby the behavioral preferences of fish result in aggregation on and around artificial reefs, without any increase in biomass.  [citations omitted]”

The answer to that question may depend on the species of fish involved, the availability of suitable alternative habitat, the design of the reef itself, and other factors.  However, experts believe that, at least in some cases, artificial reefs do provide benefits such as additional spawning habitat.

Then, there are the unintentionally created artificial reefs, which take the form of shipwrecks.  Such wrecks abound off some areas, which were known for treacherous navigation conditions—particularly during the years before electronic navigation aids became commonplace—or were places where heavy shipping traffic created a target-rich environment for German U-boats during the Second, and to a much lesser extent, the First, World War.  The approaches to New York Harbor, ranging from eastern Long Island to southern New Jersey, earned the name “Wreck Valley” from scuba divers, for the hundreds of wrecks lining the bottom.

The fish are attracted to wrecks as much as, or more than, they are attracted to intentionally-created artificial reefs.

And then there are the “accidental” reefs—man-made structures that were intended for other purposes, but ended up attracting a plethora of fish, as well.  The oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are a well-known example, and need no further discussion here.  Instead, I’ll concentrate on a relatively new phenomenon, the attraction that recently-constructed wind farms hold for various species of fish.

Wind farm development off the East Coast of the United States has been controversial, for multiple reasons.  Real estate and resort interests consider them eyesores.  They can block commercial fishermen from using some gear types in traditional fishing grounds.  There have been allegations, so far completely unsupported by any kind of biological evidence, that they lead to cetacean deaths.  And they have become a sort of political litmus test, damned at one end of the political spectrum and praised at the other.

There has been concern that wind farms might harm fishing, with some real-world evidence that they may have negative impacts on fishing efforts during the construction process, although not once the structures have been built.

Otherwise, wind farms seem to have had little to no adverse impact on East Coast fish populations, although they are new enough that not too much post-construction research has been concluded and published.

One study that has been published, “Fish distribution in three dimensions around the Block Island Wind Farm as observed with conventional and volumetric echosounders,” which appeared in the October 31, 2023 issue of Marine and Coastal Fisheries, seemed to suggest that wind farm structures have about the same impact on fish as do intentionally created artificial reefs.  That article concluded,

“We observed enhanced levels of fish abundance within 200m of wind turbined at the [Block Island Wind Farm] during a 4-day survey in August 2023.  However, these higher levels were similar to abundance further away (i.e., hundreds to thousands of meters).  These observations suggest that the turbines are acting as aggregators at scales of tens of meters but that the effect tends to be limited at broader scales.  There was an indication that the turbines influenced (1) vertical distribution, with the acoustic center of mass being deeper within proximity to turbines, and (2) aggregative behavior, with the fish being more loosely distributed within proximity to turbines.  Our survey was conducted five years after completion of the BIWF, and our results may be indicative of established wind areas, where the fauna may have adapted to the presence of the turbines.  However, the BIWF consists of only 5 turbines, so it may not be large enough to affect broadscale distribution or population level changes.  In addition, other features of the habitat, such as wrecks, rocky reefs, or physical and biological oceanographic attributes that we did not measure, could affect distributions independently of the BIWF.”

Another, slightly earlier paper, “Demersal fish and invertebrate catches relative to construction and operation of North America’s first offshore wind farm,” published in the March 29, 2022 issue of the ICES Journal of Marine Science, which reported the findings of a more elaborately structured and longer-term trawl survey, had similar findings.

“Demersal fish and invertebrate [catch per unit effort] varied spatially between the [area of potential effect of the wind farm] and two reference areas and temporally between baseline [prior to wind farm operation] and operation time periods; however interactions indicating reduced CPUE at the [area of potential effect] were not apparent.  The CPUE of several fish species were higher near the wind farm during the operation time period relative to the reference areas, providing evidence for an artificial reef effect.  For example, black sea bass CPUEs were statistically higher during the operation period near the wind farm relative to a reference area, reflecting the structure-oriented behavior of this species.  Black sea bass were observed near the BIWF turbine foundations in diver-based photographic transects, are targeted near the turbine foundations by recreational fishermen, and increased nearly ten-fold in CPUE in trawls conducted at the [area of potential effect] over the reference areas in the first two years of wind farm operation…Atlantic cod CPUE also were higher near the wind farm after turbine installation.  Cod are targeted by recreational fishermen at BIWF, as they use underwater structure as refuge and foraging habitat…  [references omitted]”

The same study found that the wind farm seemed to have no impact, positive or negative, on Atlantic herring, scup, or butterfish, might have had a negative impact on two species of skate, little skate and winter skate, although that was far from certain, and might have had a positive impact on the abundance of spiny dogfish, although that, too, was not completely clear.

Anecdotal evidence regarding the impact of wind farms on fish has been generally positive.  One study, “Anglers’ support for an offshore wind farm:  Fishing effects or clean energy symbolism,” published in the May 2023 issue of Marine Policy, found that

“a quantitative survey of 199 anglers from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts moderate support for the [Block Island] wind farm.  Experience fishing at the wind farm is associated with more positive beliefs regarding the development’s effects on catch-related aspects of fishing…”

While I’ve never fished the Block Island wind farm, Rhode Island anglers that I’ve spoken with have only good things to say about fishing around the site, and at least one well-regarded Montauk party boat regularly makes the long trip to the wind farm, rather than stay in local waters, when seeking black sea bass and big fluke, so I have to believe that the wind farm has a positive impact on fishing.

But what I find truly remarkable is how quickly fish will respond to the turbine installation.  Last year, construction began on a big wind farm located roughly south of Long Island’s Jones Inlet.  It only took about two weeks for black sea bass to move onto the structures, and maybe a month or so before local party boats began fishing within the wind farm, finding the area more productive than the scattered wrecks and artificial reefs that they had been fishing on before.

So it’s pretty clear that the wind farms really have turned into extensive, accidental artificial reefs that can hold real benefits for anglers.

Unfortunately, it appears that the current administration is doing all it can to discourage further wind farm development, and given how the United States has now tried to weasel out of signed agreements to develop new projects and reneged on licenses previously issued, it’s not at all clear that any corporation will trust the U.S. enough to enter into new agreements, even when this administration is gone.

But those anglers who live in areas with access to existing projects will still be able to enjoy what promise to be productive new fishing grounds well into the foreseeable future.